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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30118203">this will be a beacon when i'm gone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/timtom/pseuds/timtom'>timtom</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pacific Rim (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Related, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Sorry, POV Second Person, Pre-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), This Is Sad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:27:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>601</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30118203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/timtom/pseuds/timtom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
      <p>I found this unfinished draft on my hard drive and randomly decided to try and edit and finish it tonight?? i don't know why it's so sad i'm sorry i just wanted to do all the ~imagery~ </p><p>i also haven't written in a few years so pls excuse the quality lol</p><p>also this is in an au where everyone died in tokyo except for mako for drama soz</p><p>title from monument by robyn</p>
    </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>this will be a beacon when i'm gone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I found this unfinished draft on my hard drive and randomly decided to try and edit and finish it tonight?? i don't know why it's so sad i'm sorry i just wanted to do all the ~imagery~ </p><p>i also haven't written in a few years so pls excuse the quality lol</p><p>also this is in an au where everyone died in tokyo except for mako for drama soz</p><p>title from monument by robyn</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The report from the battle reads like a punch to the gut. You dragged yourself through hell and back for one survivor. One.</p><p>Honestly, you’re sorry you saved him. Or her. Or it. The neural lag delirium offers up the option that it was a dog. Fuck. If you flattened Tokyo with Onibaba for a dog …</p><p>Your eyes flit down the report, jumping from word to word, looking for any indication of who – or what – the survivor may have been. Oh <em>please</em>, don’t let it be a dog.</p><p>
  <em>Sole survivor: Mako Mori (F, 13).</em>
</p><p>Oh yes. You remember her now, in the ringing silence after the battle. She was such a small thing in her blue coat. Even from way up there on Tango’s hull, you remember seeing her, like a shiny marble lost in the depths of a storm drain. You remember her clutching at something in her hand – impossibly small from way up high, but it was glistening like a polished ruby. You remember considering the possibility that in your traumatised state, perhaps you hallucinated a tiny statuette of Captain America in the rubble. You remember how it actually made you draw breath from your lungs in a sickly wheeze, driving pain into your side.</p><p>
  <em>Both of her parents perished in the Tokyo encounter, and Mako has no available next of kin.  </em>
</p><p>Your heart squeezes. Once. Twice.</p><p>You know better than anyone that there is nothing in the world like this kind of loneliness. It's living your life submerged under ice cold water, numb to all that's around you. It’s hearing a dial tone when all you need is a single voice to guide you out of a vast nothingness. It’s sitting in the darkness, wishing to slowly fade into its shade with the same ease as slipping into sleep.</p><p>In your mind, the tiny speck of blue takes on the shape of a child.</p><p>---</p><p>After Tasmin is taken away on a flight to Hawaii for specialist treatment, you sit in your quarters with the lights off, drinking moonshine and apologising to the shadows that lie around you in the darkness. The moonshine is strong. It feels like acid on its way down, and just as harsh as it tries to retrace its steps back up your throat.</p><p>You don’t know what you’re apologising for. But the words still come. They whisper past your lips like vapour, reaching into the vast emptiness of the room, searching for a warm embrace into which it could sink its incorporeal body into and disappear.</p><p>You’re sorry you couldn’t be there when your sister died. You’re sorry that the thought of her death still makes you sick to your stomach. You’re sorry Tasmin developed cancer. You’re sorry your careers are over. You’re sorry you fought Onibaba without her. You’re sorry she lived.</p><p>You’re sorry you lived.</p><p>So you keep drinking the moonshine. Keep drinking it until your fingers are buzzing and your skin is itching and you feel that you are about to be overcome with violent shivers. Keep drinking it until the darkness smells like warm, flickering candle light. Keep drinking it in hopes that the poison will kill whatever is inside you that pulses with pain in moments like this; with its breath like the tide, one that creeps in with its pale fingers to shore, and is eased again, by the gentle call of the moonlight back into oblivion.</p><p>---</p><p>Discharged from the Jaeger pilot program for the last time, you step out of the Shatterdome into the sunlight.</p><p>In your mind, the shape of a child calls out to you.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i know lazy ending sorryyy i'm sleepy but also didn't want to end this on a such a depressing note, he goes and finds mako to adopt her and eventually has a happy family don't worry!!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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